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Jack Lew's Next Conquest

Now Treasury wants to make a big life insurer too big to fail.

Updated Aug. 26, 2014 6:45 p.m. ET

The federal Financial Stability Oversight Council finished collecting evidence last week as it considers whether the insurance company MetLife is too big to fail. This pending Beltway judgment will have large consequences for taxpayers and consumers.

And as remarkable is the way it is being decided. Businesses often dispute the judgments of their regulators, but here we have the rare spectacle of a company and its current regulators...